His father.
Impossible.
And yet…
Yesterday, for his job, Ransom Fells came to this area, northern Indiana, on the cusp of the country’s terminally ill Industrial Belt. Chesterton was about ten miles from where he’d grown up and twenty from Gary. This was an area of the United States to which Ransom had never traveled since he left home at age fourteen with his mother and younger brother to be near her relatives in Virginia, after his parents’ divorce.
He’d had a few chances to come here for business but declined. Another man at GKS Technology generally handled this part of the country.
And as for a pleasure trip to these parts? No way in hell. There were a few remaining family members nearby, but they were indistinct, distant planets in the solar system of relations.
But he wouldn’t have visited even if he’d known them better. No, the reason he was a stranger was Stanford Fells, his father.
Coming here would remind Ransom way too much of those gray Saturday afternoons in the fall, when many of his high school classmates would go to the local football games with their dads or — unimaginable to Ransom — to Soldier Field to see the Bears, on season tickets! Stan had taken him to one baseball game, the White Sox, and they’d left at the seventh inning stretch, because his father figured they’d seen enough. “Seven’s good as nine. You wait till the end, takes you forever to get out of the lot.”
Coming here would remind Ransom that Stan never bothered to tell his son anything about his job as a service tech for industrial power systems, which seemed really neat to the boy, who would’ve loved to see some of the factories Stan worked in. He never met any of his father’s work buddies, never went to barbecues with their families, like the other kids talked about.
Coming here would remind him of Stan silently enduring holiday dinners for forty minutes or so and leaving before dessert and going down to the Ironworks Tavern — yeah, even on Christmas. Preferring the Ironworks to playing with the new football his son had received as a present or helping put together the train set or playing the computer game, even though it came with two controllers.
Coming here would remind him of Ransom and his little brother — Mom dozing — glancing at the curtains of their bungalow when they heard the whooshing sound of a car approaching, lights glowing on the dingy cloth. Was it Stan? Usually not.
But then yesterday fate, God or what have you (Ransom believed in the last of that trinity only) intervened, in the incarnation of a call from his boss. “Joey’s sick, I mean fucking sick.”
“Sorry to hear that.” Ransom’s heart fell. He knew what was coming.
“Yeah. Can you take over for him?”
“Where, Chicago?”
“Indiana, north.”
Wouldn’t you know it, he thought angrily.
“You’re from there, right? You know it?”
He debated but in the end decided to stop being a wuss. It was hard to say no to his boss and even though GKS was weathering the bad economy you never knew what the future would hold. Besides, the money would be great and who couldn’t use a little extra green? So he’d said a reluctant okay, downloaded Joey’s file and read through it. He then picked up a rental car near his home in downtown Baltimore, threw the salesman’s sample cases into the trunk and hit the road, growing increasingly edgy as he miled his way west on I-70.
Near Gary he turned off the interstate and wound along state routes, until he came to an intersection he hadn’t seen for years, but remembered perfectly: Poindexter Road and Route 224. One sign pointed left toward Chesterton, six miles away, the other to his hometown of Marshall, four miles. He paused under a maple canopy of yellow and crimson, his head swiveling.
The pause, however, was only to let a Peterbilt stream past on the perpendicular. Once it was past, he turned decisively left and accelerated. There’d been no decision about which way to go.
Chesterton, Indiana, had a few upscale companies, like the one whose CEO he was set to see tomorrow, Hardwick Investments. He drove past it now, a two-story glass and metal structure in a groomed office park outside of town. But Hardwick was the exception. Soon he was into the real Chesterton, cruising by sagging and scabby one-level shipping companies and factories making products of mysterious purpose (“Compress-ease,” “Multi-span Tensioner Plus,” “Asphalux”). Plenty of abandoned ones, too. Forty, fifty years ago, when U.S. Steel and other heavy manufacturers were at capacity, there wasn’t an empty commercial facility for miles around or an unemployed worker who didn’t choose to be.
Hell of a lot different now, half ghost town.
Damn, I hate it here…
The Shady Grove Motel nestled in what was now better described as stump grove, thanks to Dutch elm, it looked like, but the place was otherwise pretty decent.
Ransom checked in and drove around back to his room, away from the busy road. He took a brief nap and then reviewed Joey’s file again. He carefully went through his salesman sample bags, organizing the trays containing tools for cleaning and repairing computers. Everybody tended to think of computers in terms of software, forgetting they were also physical boxes with moving parts. Desktops sucked in plenty of crap and laptops not only did the same but also got tossed around mercilessly. If not properly cleaned, a computer could conk out at any time.
Ironically, though, it was the computer world itself that was endangering GKS Tech. People were now ordering more and more of the products online.
Thank you very much, TigerDirect.
The days of the traveling salesman would be over soon.
But Ransom knew he’d find something else that would suit. He’d always landed on his feet. He’d learned that early. His father had dropped out of community college and didn’t value learning for anybody in the family. And so in reaction, Ransom decided that nothing was going to stop him when it came to education. Moderately smart, he’d muscled his way through high school by being extremely persistent. Faced with little money and less support after he graduated, the teenager did the army thing for two years, which let him slingshot his way into college, George Washington, in D.C., where he did very well. He foundered a bit after his discharge — Stan providing no guidance, of course — but Ransom heard back from one of his army buddies and the man hooked him up with some people in Baltimore. He took a temporary job that turned permanent. He’d never pictured himself in this line of work, but he turned out to be a natural.
Ransom Fell’s ex could be wacky, with her walls of self-help books looming like glaciers in the living room of their old Baltimore apartment, but she was pretty sharp, Ransom never hesitated to admit, even to her. Beth would look at his situation with his father and diagnose that Stan Fells had not engaged in any “life lessoning” with his son. Instead, Ransom had to rely on “self-foundation-building,” “me-ness,” and “inner-core structuring.” Despite the language, which could get even weirder, the ideas made sense. He would have phrased it more simply: Stan taught him shit and so he had to learn to fend for himself.
Which he did.
As for his mother, sure, she was there some of the time. Sure, she tried. But she largely checked out; who wouldn’t with a husband like Stan? Besides, given his upbringing, Ransom figured a boy needs a mother only until he stops sucking and gumming pureed food. When the kid’s able to walk, it’s time for the other half of the act to step up. Your turn, Dad. Freud was totally screwed up — you don’t want to kill your father; you want to go hunting with him, you want him to take you to a ball game. All. Nine. Fucking. Innings.
And with that thought he realized he was sitting forward in the cheap motel chair, hovering over his salesman’s cases, shoulder muscles solid as a tire.